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CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article

Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 9 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2024.1378541
This article is part of the Research Topic One Hundred Years and Counting: The International Growth of Waldorf Education View all 13 articles

Waldorf Education: Developing Students' Natural Talents

Provisionally accepted
Liane Brouillette Liane Brouillette *
  • University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    On September 19, 2019, students and educators from around the world celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the first Waldorf school with a huge anniversary party in Berlin. Yet, despite the international growth of the Waldorf movement, which includes Waldorf schools in 64 nations, Waldorf pedagogy is still not widely understood. Over a century ago Rudolf Steiner, who later became director of the first Waldorf school, declared: "We must give special attention to what the talents and interests of each child are… Previously, humanity did that instinctively, but in our time it is necessary to be more conscious of the need to do it" (Steiner, 1910, p. 87). Waldorf schools now have a tradition of supporting each child in discovering his or her natural talents. This article explores the following three topics: Who was Rudolf Steiner? How did Steiner come to create the first Waldorf School? What can Waldorf and state schools learn from one another?

    Keywords: Rudolf Steiner, Waldorf, Arts, reading, state schools

    Received: 06 Jun 2024; Accepted: 26 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Brouillette. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Liane Brouillette, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States

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